


The One To Blame

by Naomida



Series: The Amazing(ly shitty) Spiderman [10]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, Fantastic Four, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Twins, F/M, Gen, Heist, Original Character(s), SHIELD, grab the fluff while you can!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 08:18:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9482507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naomida/pseuds/Naomida
Summary: There was something completely surreal about being dressed as Spiderman again and surrounded by heavily trained SHIELD agents who were listening to her orders.





	

The unthinkable happened, as was often the case, on a random Thursday night when people least expected it. Hilly was in the Baxter Building's garage, sparing with Johnny Storm, and she never would have guess that that night would change everything in the superhero community.

“You're not that bad,” said Johnny with a bright smile after Hilly slammed him to the floor.

“I would hope so, I have super-strength,” she replied, helping him up and going back into a fighting stance.

He rolled his eyes, but still went back into position too and didn't wait to attack her.

Surprisingly, he wasn't as bad at hand-to-hand as she would have thought, and he didn't hesitate to use his powers anymore, even though she knew that he was still pulling his punches with it – but she figured being scared of burning someone alive was legitimate in his case, and she was pulling her own punches in fear of breaking his bones, so she said nothing.

“So,” he said when she dodged a tiny ball of fire and kicked him in the thigh hard enough to make him grimace, “you and Deadpool, huh?”

“I was wondering when you'd bring it up,” she replied, taking a punch to the shoulder on purpose so she could grab his arm and throw him over her.

He fell hard, groaning, and didn't move from his sprawl even when she offered him her hand.

“I didn't ask before because I was trying to understand, and since I still don't I'm asking.”

Tensing, Hilly frowned and crossed her arms over her chest, suddenly feeling herself grow defensive.

“What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

Johnny sat up, frowning a little too, and put his elbows on his knees, looking as casual as usual.

“I mean he's _Deadpool_. Not really the post bad boyfriend I would imagine you, _or anyone_ for that matter, running after.”

“He respects and values me, that's already a lot more than most boys. You would know,” she immediately replied, taking a step back away from him when he stood up.

“Come on Hilly, you know that's not what I mean.”

“No I don't.” she cut him, taking another step back and gritting her teeth together. “And if I were you I would shut up, because last I remember, _your_ boyfriend left his own twin sister for dead after she saved his life.”

“Hilly–”

“We're done for today.”

She slipped out of the room before Johnny could retort, and punched a wall in rage on her way out of the building, leaving a giant dent and splitting her knuckles.

 

 

***

 

 

Hilly didn't check her phone, or turned her TV on when she got home, still feeling too mad at Johnny and his insinuations for anything else than a hot shower, some wine and her bed. She only realized how big of a mistake it was when she woke up the next morning to every single news channel talking about the death of the Director of SHIELD, Nick Fury.

She stared at the television for a long moment, not moving and drinking in every word and footage that were shown, not really understanding what she was hearing and seeing.

They were saying that the prime suspect for Nick Fury's death was _Captain America_.

That didn't make any sense.

She needed her phone.

She found it buried under a pile of clothes that suspiciously looked male and red-themed, and she had sixty-two missed phonecalls.

Derek picked up after the first ring.

“We're doing it now,” he said without preambles. “SHIELD's in shambles, no one has any idea what is happening, but this is our opening and we're going to take it. You have until tomorrow morning to get ready for everything, I'll meet you at the designated place.”

“I can't–” she started to say, but he had already ended the call, and Hilly stayed with her phone clutched to her ear like an idiot for a solid minute, eyes still not leaving the television replaying, again and again, footages of SHIELD agents in front of Captain America's building and rolling out Nick Fury in a body bag.

If she was to infiltrate the Avengers Tower the next day, she'd probably end up just like him.

“Fuck, I need Wade,” she muttered once she realized that there was no way things weren't going to go down and she was, once again, going to be right in the middle of the crossfire.

Getting up, she muted the television, went to her bedroom to grab her bag of guns, and started to make some calls, hoping that she would have enough time to set everything in motion before she had to go do that stupid job.

 

 

***

 

 

“You're gonna die,” said Wade, deadly serious.

Hilly thought that he was probably the wrong guy to say something like that considering that he was bleeding through his gray t-shirt around the stomach area and she was pretty sure there was a scar on his neck that hadn't been here the last time she had seen him, but she said nothing.

After all, criticizing the one guy who had her back was probably a bad idea – and she didn't want to fight Wade in case she _did_ die the very next day.

“I don't have a choice,” she replied when he just kept on raising his eyebrows at her and it was clear he wasn't going to speak until she did.

“You can tell them to go fuck themselves, it's not too late.”

Hilly shook her head. “Derek needs me.”

“Who cares about him?!” he bit back, hands in tight fists on the table, visibly clenching his teeth in anger, “It's already a suicide mission and you're far from ready. Sending you now means immediate death.”

“The Avengers are probably not going to murder me in cold blood just because they find me looking through their secrets,” she said, trying to reassure herself as much as him.

“No, but I'm pretty sure if the Avengers find what you're after, it's SHIELD you're going to have to worry about.”

Hilly frowned, because she wasn't stupid and she knew, deep down, that SHIELD could be as bad as the really bad guys, but she couldn't help but wonder if there was something Wade knew that he didn't tell her.

Apparently, she was even more open than a book, because after only one look at her face he relaxed slightly and sighed heavily.

“Look,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose with a bare hand that she just couldn't not look at, “I've worked with SHIELD in the past, and those guys will try to fuck you over no matter what, and now that their big boss is dead and was probably murdered by Captain America himself? Things are going to be worse, and I know how much you like to be right in the middle of shitty situations, except that I won't be here to save you this time, because I'm already supposed to make sure someone else is not getting murdered.”

“And I've already told you how grateful I am that you're doing this for me.”

He reached over the table with his free hand to grab hers and intertwine their fingers, and her eyes snapped down at that. She felt stupid for having such a fixation on his gloveless hands, but it was a sign of trust on his end, and God knew she needed to be able to trust someone right this moment.

“Contrary to what you think, getting maimed is not my ultimate goal in life and I do not enjoy it,” she said, thumb running over a big scar on his palm.

Wade gave her a tiny crooked smile when she looked up at him.

“Also, I'm not the one who bled out on the kitchen floor right between your hands, so you have no right to make fun of me for being shot and stuff.”

“I came back. And you took a sword in the head once. Right after a weird alien had tried to eat you, so really, you can't talk.”

Snorting, Hilly brought the hand she was holding up to kiss the back of his palm, before finally reaching for her coffee with her other hand and starting to drink it.

“I just want you to come back to me at the end of the day, you know,” muttered Wade after a moment.

Hilly sharply looked up at him, but his face was hidden behind his mug and she wasn't even sure whatever she could have seen in his eyes would have been any consolation.

She wanted to come back to him too, of course, and this way of thinking brought up an entire new section of thoughts to the forefront of her mind, like how empty her apartment and bed felt when he was gone on jobs, and how she couldn't imagine herself doing any of what she was preparing to do without him backing her up almost every step of the way, and had the timing been different, she would have paused for more than just a second to consider this, because she had been getting to the obvious conclusion regarding her feelings for him for a long time now, but with this job and the very serious possibility that she could die or get imprisoned for the rest of her life looming over her, it was best to push it away for now and hopefully have the opportunity and time to think on it later.

“I'll come back to you,” she decided on replying once he had put his mug down and finally looked up at her, “I swear.”

His lips thinned but he nodded and squeezed her fingers between his.

 

 

***

 

 

Things at SHIELD were worse than Hilly had thought.

“This is the best shot we've got,” said a man to Hilly and Derek while the three of them were trying to navigate through the slightly panicked crowd of the Hellicarrier, “and as bad as the timing might be, we can't let this go.”

“And we understand,” immediately replied Derek, turning a glare to Hilly who in turn nodded.

The man smiled at her, looking pleased, before looking back down at his smartphone.

“The rest of the team is going to be briefed in two hours, but since the two of you are going to be in the middle of everything I wanted to make sure we all go over this beforehand, so any problem is brought up.”

Now would have been a good time to tell him that this whole mission was a problem, but Hilly didn't have a death wish, and she knew that considering how in shambles SHIELD was at the moment, she couldn't leave them high and dry. Especially Derek, who would probably be held responsible for it.

So instead, Hilly did what was expected of her. She put her training to use to make sure they were as prepared as was humanly possible in their case, and pointed out as many flaws in the plan as she could find, helping the other man and Derek perfect it until it was theoretically impossible for them to fail.

Theoretically being the main word here.

 

 

***

 

 

Hilly's next stop was at her Aunt's, because there was no way she would ever risk her life like that and not see her one last time beforehand.

She arrived there a little after lunch and found the house completely empty of anyone apart from the neighbor's cat who liked to hang around some times. It was disappointing, and Hilly was on kind of a schedule, but she still took the time to go upstairs to her old bedroom, finding it very much in the same state as she had left it.

She smiled, feeling kind of nostalgic as she looked through the few books and clothes she had left there, and was surprised to find that the Deadpool mask Wade had once given her was still where she had hid it after the fact. She considered giving it back to him for a minute, before putting it back where it was previously hidden, deciding that keeping a souvenir of the first time he had saved her life wasn't _that_ weird considering their life.

Her next stop was Peter's bedroom, completely different from hers.

There were boxes lying around, because Peter was still moving stuff from here to his new place at the Avengers Tower, and she couldn't help but scoff when she looked inside the box closest to her and found various CDs and DVDs – and the first Star Wars trilogy was right there in the middle of everything, which he would probably _never_ watch, she just _knew_ it.

Peter and her still weren't talking, hadn't even seen each other face to face apart from that terrible surprise birthday party in over a year, but that didn't stop her from still loving him and being a little stupid when it came to her brother, which was why she went through the three ratty t-shirts still hanging inside his closet, grabbed the best-looking one (a blue thing, with a nerdy pun on the front and a hole at the back of the collar) and left with it.

 

 

***

 

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” asked Johnny when he found her sitting on the living-room's couch, “and how did you even get in?”

“Mister Fantastic buzzed me in.”

Johnny raised an eyebrow at that, but didn't stop on his way to the open kitchen, throwing his jacket right next to her as he passed the couch and immediately sticking his head inside the fridge when he had it opened.

“Still doesn't tell me what you're doing here. We're not supposed to train, and I was expecting you to still be mad at me.”

“I need a favor and I don't have friends or know anyone else.”

That got him to snort, straighten up and close the fridge to turn and look at her.

“I doubt it but fine, what's that favor?”

“I need you to keep some of my stuff here, just to make sure nothing happens to it.”

He raised both eyebrows this time, and slowly made his way back to the couch, sitting down on the armrest opposite to her and crossing his arms over his chest.

“You're being weird.”

“I've always been weird,” she immediately replied.

“You're being _weirder_ than usual then. I don't like it.”

“Just say no then, it's fine, I'll find some place else to put my stuff.”

Hilly made to get up, but in a second Johnny was up, and grabbing her by the wrist and telling her to sit back down and that it was fine, and with a tiny satisfied smile she obeyed, throwing a long glance at the backpack resting on the floor next to her feet.

“The backpack? That's what you want me to keep safe for you?”

“Yep. And please, don't look inside, it's just clothes and some pictures but _still_.”

“Don't worry about that, I'm not a _creep_.”

Hilly rolled her eyes.

“I'm not saying you're a creep, but you're nosy,” Johnny opened his mouth and she cut him off by raising a hand, “And don't try to deny it, I'm starting to know you now.”

Chuckling ruefully, he shook his head before looking down at the backpack.

“Can I ask why you're putting your stuff away?”

“I'm getting my apartment redone and I don't trust the construction workers,” she easily lied.

Johnny sent her a long look under his eyelashes, the kind he had been sending her during their training sessions every time he thought she wasn't paying attention or watching, and not for the first time she wondered what, exactly, he knew about her – because she knew the whole vapid-superhero role he played was nothing but that, a completely fake role, and Johnny Storm was the farthest thing from stupid.

She was also pretty sure reading Spiderman like an open book was on his CV, and Hilly, in a way, _was_ Spiderman too.

It scared her a little, what he could possibly know and do with that knowledge.

He just nodded, at least for now, and smiled when she said her goodbyes and left, and she promised herself to apologize for all the shit she was about to do as soon as she had time and given she wouldn't die.

 

 

***

 

 

Wade slipped into bed at ten thirty-seven in the evening precisely.

Hilly knew because she wasn't even pretending to be sleeping and had been spending the last hour laying on her side in the bed and staring at the glowing numbers on her alarm clock.

“Hey,” he mumbled as he plastered himself to her back and threw an arm over her.

“Hey,” she replied, finally closing her eyes when he presses his nose right under her ear and took a deep breath in.

“Everything's ready, you won't have to worry about a thing.”

“Good.”

“And I swear I'll even wear nice, clean, non-bloody clothes.”

“Great.”

Wade sighed against the side of her neck and shimmied even closer to her, tangling their legs together and hooking his chin over her shoulder.

“Look,” he said, voice a low rumble coming from his chest that had her immediately feel just a tiny bit better, “this sucks big times and knowing you, you're _at least_ gonna get shot or something, but it's gonna be fine. You're trained, you know what you're doing and you're actually _very_ good at that, I've seen it firsthand.”

Biting her lips to keep her smile on check, Hilly tangled her fingers with his and waited for him to continue.

“Also, if anything bad happens to you, you know I'm coming to kick asses.”

That had her snorting, resulting in Wade squeezing her tighter to his chest.

“I'm glad you have my back,” she replied.

She felt him smile against her neck, and didn't refrain herself from doing the same this time.

“Now that this is out on the table, do you want to have crazy good sex for an hour or two or is cuddling fine?”

“Cuddling's perfect,” she replied. “It feels good to be the little spoon for once.”

“Don't get too used to it,” he warned, before kissing her neck and promptly falling asleep, his snores loud against Hilly's ear but oddly comforting.

 

 

***

 

 

Breakfast the next morning was a quiet affair.

Hilly was sitting at the table in front of the plate of pancakes Wade had made her, staring at him without moving as he, for once, ate slowly.

She very much felt like right after she had started to live with him, already so long ago – like she didn't exactly fit in the apartment, or even her own body.

Wade, at least, was making things better, _like he always did_. His legs were tangled with hers under the table, and he was softly humming under his breath in between bits of pancakes, his words from the night before still ringing into her mind.

 _God_ , she loved him _so much_ , she realized as he reached down with his left hand to scratch distractedly at his stomach. He was wearing nothing but sweatpants, leaving his skin and scars on display for her to see, and she was well aware of the level of trust it required for him to do so without even having to think about it.

“Not to pressure you or anything,” he said without looking up at her, “but maybe you should eat my awesome pancakes before we go take a shower with benefits and we both have to go to work.”

“I still think that 'shower with benefits' is lame,” she replied, smirking as he looked up and rolled his eyes.

“Shut up and eat, you need strength and energy.”

It was her turn to roll her eyes, but she did as he said and felt a little bit lighter when he didn't look away from her and smiled back.

 

 

***

 

 

Wade made a point of wrapping his arms around her waist, pushing her flat against his chest and kissing the breath right out of her once they were on the sidewalk and Derek's car was waiting for her just on the other side of the street.

Hilly kissed him back with as much vigor, her entire body tingling with it, and had to bite down on a giant grin when he finally let her go and took a step back.

“That was for luck,” he said, cheeks a little pink.

“You should wish me luck more often then.”

He smiled, and Hilly got up on her tiptoes to peck him on the lips one last time before she was taking a big step back.

“I'll see you tomorrow morning, okay?”

“You better be there if you don't want me kicking ass,” he replied, giving her a toothy grin, before turning on his heels and disappearing down the sidewalk.

Derek made no comment when she entered his car a whole minute later, but he still rolled his eyes before starting the car and pulling away from his parking spot.

 

 

***

 

 

There was something completely surreal about being dressed as Spiderman again and surrounded by heavily trained SHIELD agents who were listening to her orders. Derek, standing behind all of these people and facing her, looked two part anxious, one part proud, and extremely professional.

Hilly hoped she looked professional too. God knew she didn't feel like it at all.

The plan was pretty simple: they had given her one web-shooter that they had somehow managed to get from Spiderman so she had web and could swing to the building while Derek was getting in using the front door for a talk with the Avengers about Captain America and his involvement in Director Fury's death. He was supposed to hold their attention while Hilly found the right room to steal whatever she had been sent to steal. Once she was done she just had to get out the way she had came in, and Derek would quickly wrap up his talk and get out too.

Really, she had done a ton of more complicated jobs for SHIELD, but none had ever put her so close to powered people – or her brother, for that matter.

Her biggest concern was that Peter would come back early from his usual morning patrol and find her there, or someone would realize that two Spidermen were inside the building. Also, she didn't know whether the Hulk was going to be there, and if there was _one_ thing she didn't want to see up close, it was the green guy.

“You're gonna be fine,” murmured Derek when everyone got up and started leaving the briefing room to get into place.

“Are you sure?” she asked, barely above a whisper.

“I know you are, because you don't have a choice, and I've never seen you give up.”

“That's because you've never been on a truly dangerous job with me before.”

“I've seen you take on half a dozen armed men while injured. Trust me, you'll be fine this time too.”

“I hope you're right.”

He gently squeezed her shoulder, she took a deep breath in, and together they left the room and walked to the helicopter that would get them to Manhattan.

The ride was silent, tensed, and over way too quickly, and after being dropped off on some rooftop, Hilly stood on the edge, eyes closed, letting the sound of the wind and the city underneath her empty her mind and ease her anxiety.

Pretending to be Peter was nothing new, she told herself, it wasn't hard. Get in, plug the USB drive SHIELD had given her into the right computer, get out. Just like any other job she had ever done. Get in, get the thing, get out. No casualty. If everyone did their job right, she wouldn't even see a single soul while inside the building.

There was no reason for her to fuck up. Absolutely none.

“I can to this,” she told herself, breathing deeply and going over the entire plan one last time before finally jumping over the edge and starting to swing through the city – and she had to admit to herself mid-swing that she had missed the feeling of freedom that came with free-falling all over New York City like that.

 

 

***

 

 

“I'm going in,” she said, pressing a finger to her ear-piece.

“Good luck,” replied Derek before the line went silent.

Hilly counted half a minute before finally opening the door separating the balcony to the penthouse of the Tower and walking in, her entire body tensing up and her stomach hurting with the way it was tying itself into tight knots.

The open kitchen slash living room area was empty, the television was off and there was not a sound coming from anywhere. For a second, she just stood there, waiting for someone to jump out of nowhere and attack her, but when nothing came she forced herself to relax and start walking to the elevator – because she was supposed to act like Peter would, and he'd never take the stairs like all her instincts were telling her to right this instant.

She waited for the elevator for exactly twenty-three seconds, and it only took fifteen seconds for her to get down to the right floor, she knew because she kept on counting the seconds passing in her head, wondering if the seventeen minutes she had to do the job would be enough.

She got out of the elevator to a totally empty hallway and crossed it as slowly as she could, noting the position of all the cameras and comparing them to what SHIELD had told her – and weirdly, SHIELD had been right about all of them.

Just like in the penthouse, no one jumped on her when she entered the right room, took a sit in front of the computer dominating the room, got the USB drive out of the pocket of her suit and plugged it in.

A warning window appeared on the screen, before disappearing and appearing again several times until the computer froze and a new window opened, this time showing nothing but a slow charging bar.

Nothing else happened for the next two minutes, making Hilly grow more and more nervous as time passed, until the charging bar reached 10% and about a thousand windows opened by themselves and started getting copied to the drive.

Hilly checked her watch – she still had twelve minutes – looked at the door, then at the floor-to-ceiling window to her left, before checking her watch again – still twelve minutes to go.

For a while, she did nothing but bounce her knees nervously and tap her fingers against the top of the desk, but it was making her feel even more anxious than she already was, so she decided to take a peak at what it was that she was stealing.

The first thing she realized, was that everything that was being copied into the drive was also being permanently corrupted by a virus on the computer, meaning that SHIELD wasn't only stealing stuff from the Avengers, it was also making sure that the Avengers couldn't use those things ever again.

The second thing she realized was that almost three hundreds documents were being copied, both in written, video and audio format – which was weird. She had never stolen so many things at once, and she wondered what it was that the Avengers had that interested SHIELD so much that they wanted all of it.

During her training, Hilly had learned that sticking her nose in things that weren't any of her concern would most likely end up putting her in a very dangerous situation, and she had tested this during some jobs – confirming what had been drilled into her head: every time she looked too closely at something she was sent to steal, things went south before she even realized.

Really, stealing stuff for spies and being curious about what that stuff was could be very dangerous, but that didn't stop Hilly from clicking on what was being downloaded and starting to read.

She scrolled through thirty three pages of incomprehensible calculation before finally stumbling upon some English. She was looking at what seemed to be a scanned version of a printed page titled 'Jordan Lucasson Report 33879'. Most of what written on that page went over her head too, but her eyes stopped on the very last paragraph, her heart missing a beat in shock as she read the words over and over again, not believing what she was seeing.

“That's impossible,” she murmured, scrolling down to the next page, this time titled 'Bruce Banner Report 99879'.

Most of the same thing was written there, except that Dr Banner didn't go soft and used sentences such as “the most idiotic idea SHIELD ever had so far” and “could kill a lot of innocent”.

Hilly re-read that file again, just to be sure, then read the one after that, and the one after that one, and the next one, all filed with diagrams, reports from generals and SHIELD agents, photos of the results, spreadsheets and everything else that only got Hilly to get to the exact same conclusion every time she closed a file and read another one.

“Holy shit...” she murmured, barely managing to breathe under the weight of what was dawning on her as she continued to scroll down, only catching bits of sentences that all seemed to indicate what she had already read.

She couldn't give this to SHIELD. Or anyone, actually.

There was absolutely no way SHIELD was ordering her to steal that without some sort of plan to use it in the future, and she couldn't let the world go through that kind of shit again because of her.

No _fucking_ way.

She checked her watch again. Five more minutes to go. The charging bar on the screen was barely reaching 60%.

Her earpiece abruptly came to life, sending her to jump on her feet and put a hand on the drive, ready to take it out and start running.

“Stark just saw me out, what's your status?”

“Still forty percents to go,” she replied, feeling her heartbeat pick up, her stomach clenching, every single one of her muscle tense up.

Derek swore.

“Get ready to run as soon as you're good to go. Forget about not looking conspicuous, I want you out of this building as soon as possible.”

“Roger that.”

She sat back down and willed the computer to go faster, but the 62% in front of her eyes refused to bulge, leaving her with nothing to do but worriedly bite at her lip and start bouncing her legs again.

“Sir, we have visual on Spiderman,” said an agent into her earpiece.

This time, it was Hilly who swore.

“Parker, get out immediately,” replied Derek, urgency slipping into the usual cool tone he used while on a job.

“Yes sir,” she replied, getting up again and grabbing the USB drive.

She still waited a minute, until it was 80% downloaded to plug it off the computer, and just as she was straightening up and putting it into her pocket, the door to the room opened to reveal Tony Stark.

Hilly paled, tensed, and almost started running immediately, but Stark just threw her a tiny smile and took his phone out of his pocket to peer down at it.

“Hey, didn't know you were back,” he said.

Hilly debated replying – surely, he knew what Peter's voice sounded like even with the mask in the way by now, and there was no way he wouldn't realize something was wrong. She was also pretty sure her voice would be shaking if she tried to talk, so she just slowly took a step away from the computer instead of responding, putting the chair between her and Stark, and looked around the room desperately, looking for another escape route now that the billionaire was blocking the way.

“Also, funnily enough, Jarvis jut sent me a quick text telling me that there was a weird virus in the system, that apparently came from this computer right next to you,” he continued, sounding completely casual, but he looked up at her from under his eyelashes, and by the look in his eyes Hilly knew that he _knew_.

 _I'm fucked_ , she thought, right before the door to the room opened again.

Spiderman, in full costume just like her, walked in and stopped dead in his track when he laid eyes on her, and in this moment Hilly promised to herself that she was never going to dress as Spiderman ever again in her life, because it always got her into these kinds of completely shitty situations.

 

 

***

 

 

“What the fuck?” asked Peter before taking another step into the room, pausing and taking his mask off.

Stark put his phone back into his pocket, took his other hand out the pocket he had kept it in up until now, revealing that he was actually wearing a gauntlet – and really, Hilly had totally seen that one coming, but she was still shocked by it.

She had probably two milliseconds to act before they were attacking her, but the utter panic she was in kept her rooted on her spot, unable to do anything but sweat and start to hyperventilate a little.

“You better step away from that computer and start talking now,” said Stark, raising the gauntlet to her chest and taking several steps closer to her.

Hilly stepped back on instinct and pressed on the panic button situated on the web-shooter, hoping that SHIELD hadn't placed it there for decoration purpose only.

Unfortunately Stark saw her hands move and probably thought that she was going to do something because he fired at her and she barely managed to dodge – unlike the computer, that flew to the other side of the room upon impact, colliding with the wall and falling down on the floor unceremoniously, catching on fire about two seconds later.

“Wait!” yelled Peter, grabbing Star by the forearm just above the gauntlet and violently jerking him back, “Hilly, is that you?”

Hilly took another step back instead of replying, feeling dread and panic choking her, preventing her from thinking clearly. She was like a trapped animal, rooted on the spot, unable to come up with any idea about what to do next, panicked and scared.

She wanted to cry a little, because it was her _twin brother_ catching her right in the act and he already thought _so little_ about her.

Aunt May was going to be _so_ disappointed. And Wade.

Fuck, she couldn't believe every single way this could have turned bad had just happened.

“Hilly?” repeated Peter, frowning and taking several steps closer to her.

Hilly grabbed the back of the chair she had been sitting on in a tight grip and stepped back, bringing it with her. For now, that chair was the only thing standing between her and two obviously pissed Avengers, who were standing between her and the door, by the way.

The only way she was going out was through the window, she realized as Peter took another step closer and she sent a panicked look around.

The glass was probably made to resist anything, and there was no telling she would be able to break it, but like Derek had said she wasn't the type to give up during a mission, and there was a little too much in the balance this time.

She just needed a distraction to give herself a second or two.

Fortunately, she knew her brother.

“I'm so sorry Peter,” she said, grip tightening on the chair, “but you forced me to do this.”

“What?” he asked, frowning even more.

“Wait, so this is your sister?” asked Stark, starting to frown too.

Peter took his eyes off of her for all of one second to answer him, and Hilly seized her chance.

She swung the chair wildly, and threw it on the closest window as hard as she could, using every last bit of super-strength she had.

Miraculously, the chair cracked the window, Peter yelled something when she started running towards it, and she jumped with all her weight on the glass, colliding against it hard enough to make her teeth rattle and finishing to shatter it.

She went straight through the window, throwing shades of glass everywhere.

And she fell.

 

 

***

 

 

Hilly was very well aware that she was, in this moment, the absolute worst person on the planet.

Peter had lost his first love and girlfriend at the time to a big fall, and the chances that seeing his own twin fall to her certain death too would be too triggering for him to react and save her were big, but she had known, getting into the building, that dying was a strong possibility, and she was almost at peace with it.

That didn't make it any less scary when she tried to throw web at the building and absolutely nothing came out of the web-shooter.

She tried again, her heart missing a beat and her brain revolting at the simple _idea_ that a stupid ineffective web-shooter would be her cause of death, and she willed herself to not cry yet when she tried again and again, and still nothing happen.

This _had_ to be a joke. She _couldn’t_ believe it. Couldn’t let herself die so stupidly, especially dressed as Spiderman. She couldn’t let it happen.

She tried one last time, and choked a little on the knot in her throat when her attempt failed again.

She was trained though, and Derek was good at this kind of thing, so instead of panicking because she could potentially become a pancake in less than a minute she closed her eyes, took a deep breath in, and counted down the seconds.

Someone at SHIELD had done the math for her before having to jump out a window had been on the option menu. If she didn't have enough web to break her fall and if something wasn't exponentially slowing down her fall before she hit forty seconds, she was dead.

She only opened her eyes again at thirty, her spider-sense tingling just as something sticky and white connected with her right forearm, making her smile in relief.

Wrapping her fingers around the web, Hilly closed her eyes and waited for it to happen when the line went taut and abruptly broke her fall with a loud pop sound from her shoulder that had her screaming in pain.

She let go of the web because of the pain, her now dislocated arm completely useless, and fell down the seven remaining floors without so much as a noise, already knowing that Spiderman was after her and she had less than a minute to get to the rendez-vous point.

For a second, she thought about waiting for her brother and just hugging it out with him, but then her earpiece came to life as several agents started yelling at her all at the same time, and she started running without losing any more time.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been holding onto this oneshot for two months now before finally realizing last week that some major plot point didn't work, so please, now that I've fixed it, tell me what you think!


End file.
